


Angela's House

by ShaylaMorgansen



Category: Elm Stone Saga - Shayla Morgansen
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:00:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23961976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShaylaMorgansen/pseuds/ShaylaMorgansen
Summary: Renatus takes Aristea from the Archives at Stonehenge to her sister’s house, but she declines without confessing to him that it’s the anniversary of her family’s murders. A deleted scene from 'Haunted'.





	Angela's House

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, Magic Makers! You’ve found the May ‘deleted scene’, which comes from Haunted. Scenes get removed during the editing process for all sorts of reasons – sometimes they conflict with the suspense by giving too much away, other times it’s simply a matter of word reduction. This scene made its chapter too long, and also threatened the impact of a future scene when Renatus and Angela finally meet. 
> 
> In Chapter 17, Renatus offers to take Aristea from the Archives at Stonehenge to her sister’s house, but she declines without confessing to him that it’s the anniversary of her family’s murders. The published version has her quickly regret this refusal, but the first draft saw him take her anyway. Which do you prefer? Tell me by leaving a comment!

“Ready?” Renatus asked, tucking his folded-up lists inside his jacket. I nodded, forcing a quick grateful smile. I lifted my arm obligingly for him to take; I wasn’t game to Displace myself after my encounter with the void. Luckily there wasn’t much Renatus couldn’t do, and even less he was afraid to try.

Including pulling me quickly through the black space between places to step out into the afternoon across the sea on a quiet Coleraine street called Cairn Gardens.

My street. My house. I swallowed a bitter taste.

“What are we doing here?” I waited for a response. It didn’t come. I knew. “What are we doing here _today_?”

Renatus let me go and followed at my side, wordless, as I hurried up the gentle slope of the street to see Angela’s place. I rubbed my arms despite the warmth, pushing down the strum of fear that filled me, overwhelming the anger for the first time in days. Why had he brought me to my sister? I stepped onto the kerb and craned my neck up the curve of the street, trying to get a glimpse of Angela’s tidy herb garden edging the little two-bedroom house that I used to think of as home. My eyes were still strained from days of close reading in poor light and on little rest.

“Is she…?”

“Qasim and Emmanuelle handled the interrogation and Lord Gawain laid charges and released the trespasser to the mortal authorities,” Renatus told me as he kept pace, looking around my neighbourhood with interest. He’d not been here before. “They won’t tell me anything more than that. But she’s safe. I thought you should see for yourself.”

The mundane sound of a car door closing and the beep of remote central locking reached me before I came into sight of the driveway. I inhaled sharply and stopped abruptly when I did, catching Renatus by the sleeve of his light jacket. Fresh wards sprung from me without thought, deflections like I’d cast on the Charles Bridge to turn eyes away.

Angela had just arrived home from work. Five-thirty. My heart thudded a little painfully as I watched the blurry back of her head pause at the door, heard the jangle of her keys. _Angela_. Still clutching Renatus’s arm, I crept forward, half-forgetting that we were totally invisible. My sister was frozen at the door, head turned aside like she was listening to something. I knew it had to me; even without the training I’d undertaken the last few months, Angela was a powerful witch, and always very perceptive.

 _She looks like you_ , Renatus noted, and in my mind I was aware of him brushing through old memories of my siblings as children and teenagers, fair-haired and similar in age. I let a segment of my attention stay with him and kept the rest with present-day Ange.

“She knows I’m here,” I breathed, running through my automatic mental checks of my wards, looking for gaps. Feeling torn. Half of me wanted for the wards to fail, for them to fall away and for Angela’s now-roaming sea-green eyes to catch me.

The other half was petrified of that happening, and held the shields strong until I felt her clamp down on her own wandering paranoia and saw her disappear inside. Door shut.

I released the breath I was holding, beginning to probe the property with my senses. To feel my Angela moving inside, safe. To feel Emmanuelle’s ironclad wards enveloping the place.

The anger started to seep back, recalling why this was even a concern. Because someone came here to try to use her against me, because my photograph and my story was out there, because I was in Prague when I shouldn’t have been, because Lisandro was the bane of my existence.

The anger burned in my veins.

“Good thing she didn’t see us,” Renatus noted dryly, shaking my hand off and gesturing at the invisible force field around us. “Is this really necessary? You can go and talk to her. I can even stay out here, or I can come back and get you…”

 _Later, tonight, tomorrow…_ I heard the different options in his head, a gentle push in the direction he thought would be beneficial for me. Love and support from my most favourite person in the world. I followed her movements around the house with my senses, closing my inadequate eyes. He had to know how badly I wanted to do as he suggested.

“No,” I said finally, folding my arms and turning away so he didn’t catch my eye. For _months_ , I hadn’t worried about my sister for more than a passing moment, until this last week when, I suppose, two of the three foundations on which I’d built my pseudo stability had been kicked out from under me. Hiroko was gone. Angela was targeted. I surveyed the house one more time and shook my head. “I don’t want her to see me…”

“Scarred? As you keep reminding me, that isn’t going anywhere. Are you going to avoid her for the rest of your life?”

I frowned; the pull on my facial muscles and skin no longer twinged, and I felt like I was taking full advantage, frowning more than I used to.

“No, of course not. But, right now…” I took a breath and made myself swallow the anger that rose up at his words. He wasn’t the one I was mad with. “Please, just take me home.” He angled his gaze meaningfully at my sister’s house, and I exhaled heavily, torn. I dropped the wards. “Your home. You know what I mean.”

He sighed, having tried his best, and offered his hand. “Fine. Whatever you say.”

We didn’t speak the whole walk up the path from the gate to Morrissey House and we arrived at the door to the noisy dining hall in silence.


End file.
